Book review: Winter Time by Laurence Fearnley
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Loading... - Ahmad Salah
- 31 May 2022
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REVIEW: Why do so many South Island writers evoke place so vividly? Maybe it's the iron winters. Or the high, blue-and-gold summers. Or the contrast between the two. Whatever, landscapes craggy or placid, sea-bound or snow-bound are an insistent presence in the work of Owen Marshall​, Brian Turner​, Keri Hulme​, Fiona Farrell​, Denis Glover​....I could go on. Actually, I already have.
They stand insistently in the quiet, accomplished fiction of Laurence Fearnley​ as well. Winter Time​, her new novel, is immediate with the “frosted breath...mist,” black lakes and white peaks of the Mackenzie Country.
It's the land where protagonist Roland grew up, and to which he's returned after the jolting death of a brother. He's become a stranger after years in Sydney as a wholefoods entrepreneur (neat, unexpected touch). But then, he was already an outsider while he grew up among the tussock and hills: gay, a vegetarian (indrawn breath), uninterested in guns, fishing or skiing.
The fictional but very recognisable little town of Matariki to which he comes back is also alien now; abandoned by many locals, invaded by trendy urbanites. Holiday homes, apartments, new developments pock the landscape. Sections are going for half a million. That's depressingly recognisable as well.
Roland has returned to mysteries. Sinister mysteries in several cases, and they start looming from p2. Was his brother's death a road accident or something more chilling? Who is posting faked and provocative Facebook comments in his name? Why the tensions and enmities among DOC staff, hunters and others in the area? Is it possible the silent lakes may convulse in some tectonic catastrophe? And why is elderly neighbour Mrs Linden such a rude and contemptuous old cow towards him?
Conflicts, always a good narrative power source, also build early. They crackle or brood between business partners and lovers, in local politics, within individuals, between people and the unrelenting environment. There are deaths. A lot of deaths: half Roland's family is wiped out at various stages and again it involves mysteries.
Roland is a pretty daring creation. He's loyal, persistent, perceptive but largely ineffectual. He sees a lot, achieves only a little. His vulnerability and intermittent fragility are an intriguing inversion of the trad protagonist and Fearnley uses this adroitly in an increasingly nuanced, nervy plot.
As you'd expect, the landscape is also a participant. Roland remembers schooldays so cold, he and Eddie would whack their feet with schoolbooks to try and warm them. Peaks, glaciers, deep water bide their time. There's much beauty: “the pale silver-blue of the slopes...bands of bright blue sky.” There's also damage and menace.
Fearnley's prose is precise, spare, springy with cadences of colloquial Kiwispeak, yet resonant with imagery. She's a quiet writer, never showy, building her moods and participants unobtrusively, steadily. There's even the odd and engaging bit of pawky comedy; enjoy the leaking wheat bag. Read More…
